Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (27 page)

“I know it sounds stupid, but…”

“But they’re fairy tales,” said Maurice.
 

Reginald leaned forward. “You want to hear a story, my friend?” he said. “I grew up believing
vampires
were fairy tales. Shape-shifters and incubi too.”

“That’s different.”

“No, it’s not. You know what it took for me to believe that vampires were real? I had to become one. Put me in a room a year ago with three humans and change this conversation so that we’re talking about you — a guy who can be shot and heal instantly, who burns in the sunlight, who drinks blood and can live forever. We’d all be telling each other that you were wearing body armor, had a skin condition, and were a goth freak obsessed with the occult. You’d sprint around the room and lift a piano, and then as soon as you’d gone, we’d start saying how it must have been a trick of light, or we were hallucinating. Anything but the truth. Logan even said it back at my trial — the main reason humans don’t know we exist is because they
refuse to believe it
.”
 

“What are you saying?” said Nikki.
 

“I’m saying that if it looks like an angel, walks like an angel, and talks like an angel, we should start with
believing
it’s an angel, not disbelieving it. It’s not unscientific to believe a myth. What’s unscientific is to refuse to believe something that all of the evidence is pointing toward simply
because
it’s a myth. As you once told me, Maurice, let’s be the first people to see what’s right in front of our faces.”

Maurice was shaking his head slowly, trying to find a way to agree with Reginald.
 

“The myth says that six renegade angels made a kind of Faustian bargain with God to create two races: vampires and humans. Vampires were given the night. Humans were given the day. Vampires were given speed and strength, but cursed with several mortal weaknesses, such as allergies to silver, wood, and sunlight. Humans were given the ability to protect the places they lived, and vampires couldn’t approach without a deliberate invitation. Another interesting thing I discovered. Maurice, is it true that a human can’t be glamoured into letting a vampire inside their home?”
 

Maurice laughed. “Yeah. Everyone eventually figures that out. It’s a running joke with new vampires to not tell them and let them figure it out for themselves. Our version of hazing.”
 

“Think about it. Why would that be? ‘That human won’t let me in? Fine… I’ll force him to!’ But you can’t. It’s too convenient, the way that loophole is closed. It seems to require a conscious choice — something intervening to keep the game fair for humans. It sounds like what Altus said: rules for the sake of rules. Ritual for the sake of ritual.”
 

“You think it’s a game?” said Nikki.
 

Reginald nodded. “I think it was a bet. A wager between what humans call God and what you call the Six. The genesis force of each race, pitting its players against each other. One dark and one light, like a giant game of chess.”
 

Reginald looked at Maurice. “What Balestro did to you, keeping you away from him? That looked to me like the same magic that keeps vampires from entering human homes. Something, say, that his kind might have given to humans when it all began. But if that’s true, it means that you couldn’t touch him unless he allowed it, and I’d say that’s a significant disadvantage in a fight — especially if they deliberately gave us weaknesses and know exactly what those weaknesses are.”
 

Nikki began biting her fingernails.
 

“And there’s free will again — humans choosing to let us in. Ritual. Rules. I always thought the things supernatural beings had to abide by seemed so arbitrary. Like the stake through the heart. Why would that hurt an immortal creature? Because once upon a time, someone said so.”
 

“So what do you think all of this is?” said Maurice. “What did Balestro mean? What would he want?”
 

“Maybe the game is over,” said Reginald. “Maybe the Six are tipping over their king on the big chessboard.”
 

“Conceding defeat?” said Nikki.

“Why not? How many vampires are there in the world, Maurice?”

“At last census, around seventy thousand.”
 

“Worldwide, or US?”
 

“Worldwide.”
 

Reginald nodded. “Humans number nearly seven billion. I’d call that a loss for our side, and that despite our superior speed and strength.”
 

Nikki hugged her arms around herself. “Ugh. I can’t believe I’ve got a date to join the losing team right at the final buzzer. This almost makes me not want to become a vampire.
Almost
.”
 

“Look,” said Reginald. “It
could
be nothing, of course. But I think we should consider the possibility that we’re facing a game-over situation. Maybe the powers that be are preparing to fold up the chess board, put away the black pieces, and let the winning team have the field to themselves.”

“Why?” said Nikki.
 

“Maybe it was the terms of the bet,” said Reginald. “There’s a lot out there — fragments of myth that never made it down the line, through the aeons, into the version we know today. There are bits that talk about the angels’ names, for instance. One of the Six was named Baelstrom, similar to our word ‘maelstrom.’ Do I need to point out what a maelstrom is, or how similar the name is to our guy? And there are allusions to a final countdown before armageddon, too. Consider it an overtime period, during which the losing side has a chance to continue playing. Sort of like how when you fail out of a video game, sometimes you’ll get ten or twenty seconds to insert another coin and continue.”
 

“I’ll bet I can guess how long the overtime period was,” said Maurice.
 

“A convenient way to measure things in the long-ago,” said Reginald, nodding. “One moon. Now, technically, the lunar cycle is 29.53 days, so I guess they rounded up.”
 

Nikki tapped her chin with a finger. “28 days left.”
 

“The overtime period,” said Maurice. “You said the losing side has a chance to keep playing?”

Reginald shook his head. “I doubt it. It reads like it’s just more ritual. Technically we’d have a choice, but it sounds like a choice with no correct answer. You heard what he said. The choice isn’t whether to live or die. The choice is whether to die by their hand or our own. It’s a way out of the loophole, nothing more.”

Maurice tapped the pencil eraser on the desk. Reginald made a coin vanish, appear, vanish.
 

“So is this it?” said Nikki. “You just do nothing and wait?”
 

“We can hole up. We can run. Or we can try to bargain.”
 

“Bargain. How?”
 

Reginald shrugged. “Beg for our lives, maybe.”
 

Maurice sat up straight. There was a small noise as the cigarette dropped from his fingers and hit the floor.
 

“Or,” he said, “we could right the game.”
 

Reginald, surprised to be caught off guard for a change, looked up at Maurice. “How?”

“Have you ever been to France?” he said.
 

C
HATEAU
AND
C
AVE

TWENTY HOURS LATER, REGINALD, MAURICE, and Nikki were crammed into a shipping crate in the belly of a 747 bound for Paris, next to a kennel containing some kind of a hound dog that wouldn’t stop barking. They were all going to be late for work on Monday — perhaps a few weeks late. None among the three called Berger to let him know that they would be away. The nice thing about being a vampire, Reginald thought, was that he could tell his boss that he was going to need some time off after the fact, and the boss would always cheerfully grant it.

They’d taken a red eye into New York. Once there, they’d taken a 4am cab to a nondescript industrial building, where Maurice had a friend and associate he’d called before they’d boarded their first flight. Maurice handed over a significant stack of cash, and the man (whose name was actually “Jimbo”) beckoned them into a crate with a wave not unlike that of a five-star maitre d’. Jimbo then sealed the crate, and many hours later, they heard the beeping and whirring of a forklift and felt themselves moving.
 

Maurice apologized for the accommodations — especially to Nikki, who insisted on traveling with the vampires rather than topside in comfort — and told them that the flight back would be much more comfortable. He explained that taking a commercial eastbound transatlantic flight was a very, very bad idea for a vampire. Even if you left at 9pm while it was still dark, the flight lasted seven hours — and thanks to the time difference, would set you down in Paris at 9am. Except in the dead of winter, it was nearly impossible to fly eastward overseas in total darkness, and even then, you were taking a huge risk if there was a delay, or if you ended up sitting on the tarmac. It wouldn’t matter if you closed your window, because most people kept them open. And then there was also the gap between the jetway and the plane, the windows in the airport, and any ground transportation to contend with.
 

On the return flight, they’d be able to leave at 10pm and arrive home at midnight. Time enough, even, to make a connection home without having to overnight in New York.
 

“Assuming we’re still alive,” said Maurice.
 

“Naturally,” said Reginald.
 

Maurice laid back against the side of the crate and adjusted a small, battery-powered lantern.
 

“Ironically, even with paying Jimbo and bribing customs, going over in a crate doesn’t cost much more than three last-minute plane tickets,” said Maurice.

“Four,” said Reginald. “I need two seats.”
 

“And there’s so much legroom!” said Nikki. Then she waved a small notebook overhead. “And look! I brought Mad Libs!”
 

Once they landed, there was more noise and more forklifting as the crate was moved again. Then a scratching noise came from the crate’s edges, followed by the squealing of pulled nails. The side of the crate came open, and they found themselves in what looked like a hangar, blinking against bright warehouse lights.

“End of ze line, vamps,” said a man in greasy overalls with a thick French accent. “I am supposed to tell you
not
to eat me. I am… how you say? ‘On your side.’”
 

Maurice thanked the man, then tipped him like a skycap.
 

It was dark outside. There was a large digital clock on the wall of the warehouse that gave the time as 22:12, or 10:12pm. They walked through a small man door next to a giant rolling door large enough to accommodate an aircraft without wings, out into the Paris night.
 

“Smells French,” said Reginald.
 

“Ironically, I just got back from Paris,” said Nikki. “I should have stayed. So are you finally going to tell us where exactly we’re going?”
 

Nikki had been antsy for the entire trip. Neither Reginald nor Maurice had wanted her to come on a dangerous, end-of-the-world vampire errand. She’d insisted, saying that she hadn’t wanted to go on the
last
“dangerous vampire errand” either, but that she’d been a champ back then and hence should be allowed to decide for herself now. So to get back at her, neither Reginald nor Maurice would tell her their half of the joint reason for coming to France.
 

“I think I’ve figured out where Balestro will show up again in 26 days,’” said Reginald.
 

“Cradle of civilization? Nile Valley?” said Nikki.
 

“South Germany. A big hill, with a huge stone on the top.”
 

“Famous place?”

“Not at all,” said Reginald. “It’s in a park. I think kids sled down it. Not this time of year, though.”
 

“So how do you know that’s where he’ll be?”

“Because he said I’d know,” said Reginald. He didn’t tell her the rest, which was that he knew about the German sled hill because it had been in his mind ever since they’d met Balestro, as if Balestro had beamed it into his head. It was like Richard Dreyfus and Devil’s Tower in
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
He’d even caught himself carving the hill out of mashed potatoes one night at dinnertime.
 

Nikki turned to Maurice. “And
your
secret?”
 

“Luxembourg,” said Maurice.
 

“What’s Luxembourg?” said Reginald, who’d never been outside of the US.
 

“I thought you said we were going to France,” said Nikki. “Why did you say we were going to France if we were actually going to Luxembourg?”

“What’s Luxembourg?” repeated Reginald.
 

“This is why,” Maurice told Nikki, cocking a thumb at Reginald. Then he turned to Reginald. “Luxembourg is a very small country wedged between France, Germany, and Belgium. Don’t worry, you’re hardly the only person who’s never heard of it. Luxembourg’s position puts it right in the middle of Western Europe and, because it ends up being neutral ground more or less by default, it’s the perfect seat for the EU Vampire Council.”
 

Maurice had already explained that even though the American Council acted as if it was the only game in town, it wasn’t. There was an EU Council, a Far East Council, a South Pacific Council, a South American Council, and several others. America’s Vampire Nation was the largest in population and had more or less cut off relations with the others, declaring itself independent and self-sufficient. There seemed to be more behind Maurice’s statement about the American Nation’s independence, but he didn’t volunteer it. He only said that he’d come overseas years ago looking for a better life and had been torn ever since. Vampires had a far, far better network in America, but they also had what he called an “American edge.”